The present invention relates to a spring conveyor apparatus for positioning and feeding a spring from a star shaped conveying hub to a downstream processing station.
Spring conveyor apparatus with servo drive are known wherein a spring is grasped by the gripping hand of a star shaped multi-armed conveyor and fed from there to additional stations. Such machines serve to convey a manufactured spring in a manner suitable for processing and precisely positioned to an arrangement where the springs are mounted on a spring core, a pillow or a seat cushion.
In such spring insertion stations, a spring is grasped by a spring manufacturing machine, which is known per se and thus will not be further described herein, by a gripping hand of a multi-armed conveying star. That spring is then fed to various other downstream stations of the assembly machine via a spring insertion machine.
In commonly assigned published German patent DE 34 26 110, which is hereby incorporated by reference, a spring manufacturing machine was described where a star shaped conveyor was also provided. Each spring produced in that station is inserted into the respective gripping hand of the conveying star, grasped by clamping and fed to a subsequent processing station.
The spring insertion station connected to it functions such that swivelled jaws were provided in the run-out area of the respective gripping hand of the conveying star, which swivelled jaws accepted the spring between them whereby the spring coming from the gripping hand of the conveying star was inserted between these swivelled jaws. Such a swiveling motion of the accepting jaws in the area of the spring insertion station, however, had the disadvantage, that the spring inserted into the spring insertion station could never be positioned precisely enough. This, in connection with the additional disadvantage that the spring had to be precisely aligned via a large number of alignment stations which was associated with high machinery outlays.
Accordingly, in applicant's known prior arrangement, it was not possible for the belt drive to execute different strokes and, consequently, the springs could be conveyed to the transfer arrangement only with the same distance between them. This resulted in the disadvantage that the individual distance between the springs had to be adjusted in the zone of the transfer arrangement located near the end of the drive chain, which resulted in higher machinery outlays and correspondingly increased manufacturing costs for the transfer arrangement.
In the prior art, a mechanical drive connection was used between the conveying star and the downstream spring conveying arrangement which resulted in the disadvantage that only constant strokes could be used and, correspondingly, that only a constant distance between springs could be set.